At a recent Anthrocon Board of Directors meeting, it was approved for Anthrocon to match up to $350 in donations received in the UMA’s GoFundMe campaign to cover trophy manufacturing and costs.

The donation is viewed as a way to support writers. Many publishers release new works at Anthrocon, and the con has a substantial writing track which doesn’t cost much to run. Anthrocon spends a lot to support fursuiters (they can get special souvenir tags, for example), but the writing track has never asked for more.

During the discussion, it was noticed that the ALAA hasn’t gotten other cons to donate yet. It was suggested the ALAA use this opportunity to ask other cons to match a portion of GoFundMe donations too.

There was discussion of making Anthrocon’s donation regular annually – if other cons donate regularly Anthrocon is likely to join in, probably matching their amounts. Now is the time to step up and help.

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by Patch O'Furr

Co-written by Thurston Howl and Patch O’Furr. Full disclosure – Howl and Patch have received Ursa Major awards by community vote.

Even in non-writing communities in the furry fandom, many furries are aware of the Ursa Major Awards. They’ve been around for about 17 years, have presence at cons, and each year they receive many voters. However, for all their legacy, Thurston Howl – (a furry publisher who assisted with social media and marketing for the UMAs in 2017) – has come forward with concerns involving the UMAs’ recent soliciting for donations and GoFundMe campaign.

A transparency concern.

Until now, there has been no formal budget or accounting for funding. Fred Patten, Secretary of the ALAA (Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which runs the UMAs), told Howl on 5/30/17: “I cannot remember that the Treasurer for the ALAA has ever submitted a formal treasury report.” Fred confirmed there were no records for 17 years, and later added:

I don’t know how much it costs to print UMA award certificates, buy frames for them, ship them to the recipients, make and ship powerpoint presentations, etc., and I don’t know how much total in donations we’ve gotten over the years…

There have been complaints in email discussion by associates. ALAA member Bernard Doove said: “I would like a report on the finances that is more than ‘we’re broke.'” And on 5/4/17, a donor reported that they considered their donation “an unwise decision that could have been put to much better use elsewhere.” There were even fears of misappropriation, but Bernard Doove found no evidence when he looked in the bank accounts. The explanation seems to be fees of $156/year to maintain a Checking and Savings account if they have under a $300 minimum balance each.

It honestly seems like an issue of mixing small fan efforts with more formal organization, like how fandom started. ALAA Treasurer Rod O’Riley was a fandom founder who helped start Confurence in 1989. He responded to a request for comment:

The problem is not transparency — the problem is a lack of funds to be transparent about.

All donations have made their way into our bank account, and have been spent on either what they were supposed to be spent on — making and mailing out our trophies and plaques — or else were swallowed by the bank fees. ALL donations. Sometimes they took a while to get where they were going — as recently, when PayPal and our bank’s on-line system had difficulties talking to each other, for reasons I still do not understand. But eventually, they got where there were going.

by Patch O'Furr

How devoted are furries? To commission a fursuit, they tortuously wrap themselves in duct tape, pay thousands of dollars and trust a years-long wait before getting something back. Imagine if you had to do that for a new car or stove?

The upside is direct exchange for hand-made goods, but the downside is a clunky process with a lot of invested effort and risk of fraud or failure. It works because fandom is close-knit, but there’s opportunity for better platforms to help buyer and seller. (I was posting about it in 2013). Fursuit makers seem to be niche enough to handle their own business, but freelance artists handle smaller projects much more frequently. Art commissioning sites have started up to help. Achieving scale of users may be a challenge, but they’re in a growing fandom and word is getting out.

Commiss.io first caught my notice with their banner in the dealer’s den at BLFC. Now Hunter, the CEO, joins me to chat about the service.

My impression of Commiss.io is a business aimed at the freelance art marketplace. It was started by furries but it’s for any and all users. Do I have that right? Who’s on the team?

Pretty much! Though most of us have at least some involvement in the fandom, Commiss.io was created for any and all creators. Not just anthro artists, but musicians, sculptors, and more! We’ve really seen a lot of adoption within fandoms, furry and otherwise, and we’re really happy to provide a great place for that!

Right now there are four of us that work on the project. Myself, Mark, Chris, and Nate. There are, of course, all of the great artists and commissioners on the site as well! Right now we all do a little bit of everything, from outreach, marketing, customer support, and coding.

Commiss.io is described as a “place to manage your creative shop” – helping with payments, project management, licensing, asset delivery, and more. Is this improving on other services?

We saw a niche that needed filling. There are gallery sites, social networks, project management sites, and sites for very small freelance projects and very large ones. Together they all create a very disjointed experience, with little focus on projects in the range that many freelance fandom artists tend to focus on. As a result, creators end up with an uneven experience and the need to manage themselves across a number of platforms, without a central location to track their projects and ensure protection for sellers. When things are messy, it’s easy to get lost.

Our goal is to be a central hub, with the process fading into the background so creators can focus on creating, and clients can have a great experience.

With 82 total bids, the $13,500.00 Made Fur You auction that ended yesterday is our new record winner, beating out our previous record of $10,100.00 on a Mishka Silver Fox fursuit auction by Howl Yeah with 37 bids back on 9/08/16.

If anyone was curious as to what the suit will be. This is the character I am looking to get done. I was debating between this one and my bunny; but there are some other makers I would prefer to have my bunny done by, so Sage is the choice. pic.twitter.com/fzy1kzto55

Furries have built their own small industry on creativity worth millions. Their membership is rising and it’s likely to see the “furry economy” grow with it. You can see what’s up by watching the small slice who are devoted enough to make a living in the fandom – Profans.

Adult art can have an edge in dollars because it has more of a niche quality. Clean art is perfectly valid, but perhaps the mainstream is where it succeeds most – making an apples/oranges comparison. This look at indie art business will focus on the naughty stuff, but doesn’t exclude other kinds, and it applies outside of fandom too.

When first looked at in January 2017, fandom member Fek was earning $24,000 per month for making furry porn games. (Quote: “Ditch the dayjob and live the dream.”) He had the stat of #2 best-paid per-patron on all of Patreon. (See his art on Furaffinity.) Others were in or near the furry ballpark (dogpark?) Most of the NSFW entries in the top 50 had furry content. #12 was the Trials in Tainted Space NSFW game, earning $27,000 per month. #30 was the kinda-anthropomorphic-NSFW artist Monstergirlisland, earning $20,000 monthly.

I haven’t checked these numbers since early 2017, and I think the list changed from “amount of money” to “number of patrons” which knocks furries down the list, but… Artists are getting rich from this, no joke.

Older news:

Cracked – We Draw Furry Porn: 6 Things We’ve Learned On The Job. “Every artist agreed it would have been impossible to make a living doing this as recently as 10 years ago. But today they constantly have multiple projects going and portfolios with hundreds of completed works, and they find themselves in ever-increasing demand.”

by Patch O'Furr

Furry Raiders: a Colorado-based and online group that overlaps with “altfurry”, a fringe of furry fandom with a goal to connect racist hate groups inside and outside it.

It’s 2018, and many people have New Years resolutions to accomplish. But a few people are stubbornly against being better. That means the Furry Raiders. This week they gained attention for violent threats meant to silence criticism – (because when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them). Their threats followed labeling themselves as “Nazis” – (a look at their member activity in the altfurry chat logs proves it’s really true). Until now their trolling has mostly been inside fandom. But then there was the time when they targeted innocent non-furry outsiders.

We did Nazi that coming!

On Halloween of 2017, a Colorado event space had a “Big Gay Costume Party”. Foxler and Kody, the Furry Raiders founder and partner, went in costume with nazi armbands that replaced swastikas with paws. With nobody else’s help, the staff recognized what the symbolism stood for. The Raiders were kicked out for bringing hate to their space.

Foxler and Kody’s excuses like “it’s just a paw” didn’t work. Anyone can see they’re making a clear reference to nazi iconography. This is good evidence that trolling isn’t just a fandom issue with “both sides” fighting and so-called “SJW’s” inside. Outsiders know these trolls are the source of the problem.

When a business kicks someone out, that’s free market power, freedom of association, and free speech opinion by staff. (A protected social class can claim discrimination, but Nazi isn’t a class.) Reasonable people would move on and drop it. But reasonable people doesn’t include a troll whose name means “Fox Hitler”. Again, when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them.

The Furry Raiders retaliated by trolling the business with bad reviews. The review bombing was spread from their Facebook group by trolls who are active in alt-right hate activity (including their member Vetus, who supported trolling FurAffinity with hate images). The story was twisted by people who had never been there; they lied that there was no hate symbolism and pretended a “Big Gay Costume Party” rejected them for being gay.

by Patch O'Furr

Flying out to Pittsburgh this past June for Anthrocon was a fantastic experience. I got to spend time with my friends and see this convention for the first time. However there was something that felt a bit off to me.

It took a different experience at Anthro Weekend Utah to make me aware of what exactly I was feeling at Anthrocon. I had never noticed before, but there is a sense of classism in the furry community. (I didn’t experience any of this classism at Anthro Weekend Utah.)

A lot of people in this fandom are successful, and they should be proud of it! However, sometimes this financial success creates an aura of a “holier than thou” attitude that they may not be aware of. By spending copious amounts of money and keeping their social cliques to people in the same financial situation, it creates a feeling of the haves and have nots.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive to reach this kind of success. For the most part this fandom is full of people who are intelligent and apply themselves, and they should be happy that they are in their situation. All I’m asking is to just be aware that sometimes, all the extravagance and copious spending creates social rifts. It can be detrimental to a convention’s social experience. This fandom has definitely been through a lot of social change lately, and my hope is that the next change is to be aware that everybody is in a different socio-economic status, and to at least try to be inclusive in that regard. It’s great to see a fandom that is getting more and more inclusive. However I think as a community we could work better on inclusivity across socio-economic barriers.

I’m not saying you’re evil if you own a fursuit or have a lot of money. But I think everybody should be entitled to have a fun time without feeling the socio-economic barriers they may experience outside of the fandom. In the end, no matter your current socio-economic status, we are all fans of anthropomorphic animals and we all share this in common. Let’s go out there and have fun without class elitism!

by Summercat

When I joined the fandom in 1999, there were very few ways to shop for furry fandom merch. Most of your purchases were made via mail-order, or at a convention dealer room. There were few options for buying things from individuals – I recall having to mail a money order for my first online purchases.

Anthrocon 2006 Dealer’s Den. Photo by GreenReaper.

But that was 18 years ago. Today, with low-barrier tools like Square and Paypal, it is easier than ever to purchase work directly from someone living somewhere else in the world. Starting in the mid-2000s, the Furry Fandom has had it’s marketplace explode in volume and quantity. While there is a wealth of options around us, it can be confusion on where to go or start when trying to see what sort of Furry merchandise is available.

Here, I have compiled a list of online places where people can find books, comics, clothing, fursuits, and commissions from a variety of people. Due to otherwise overwhelming the list, I am excluding publishers that primarily sell their own imprints. For those, see: Furry Publishers – A Resource for Artists and Authors. This list is not exhaustive – if you feel something has been left out, please speak up and let us know!

by Patch O'Furr

Crazdude looks like one of those multi-talented artists that are one of the secret weapons of furry subculture – bright and devoted people with a buffet of skills like making art, writing, or performing all at once. For the blog she started in 2016, I got a professional impression from a first glance. (I look out for blogs that seem to vibe with Dogpatch, so I liked finding this.)

The Crazblog bears out a good impression by sharing her selection as Guest of Honor at Fur-Xoticon. It lets you in on a personal detail:“As just a first-year newbie to the Artist Alley and Dealer’s Den experience at furry conventions, this came as quite an exciting surprise!” Highlighting the newbie disclosure and small/local con size isn’t too critical, if you take it for granted that Furry is full of DIY power – it’s just good to keep in mind while reading the below post with an open mind. It mentions 3 years of experience at other cons.

Here is my breakdown of some of the aspects of vending at a furry con AA/DD that do more harm than good (+ possible solutions!) PLUS a bonus section of things that make vendors & artists happy! 💓

Crazdude’s post – “Top 5 ways conventions let their vendors down (+ Cons doing things that artists love!)” – led me to a point/counterpoint peer discussion that I wanted to share in response. I considered breaking down salient points for a formal article, but I liked the natural flow of a casual chat here. The chat is between me (plus a few stray watcher comments) and ScalieStaffer (name redacted to keep opinions apart from their position). They’re a fur with 8 years of con staffing experience in multiple departments, with roles both minor and major.

by Summercat

When I first joined the Furry Fandom, there weren’t many fandom publishers, and most printed works were vanity press or self-publishing. These days, it seems that the world of Furry Publishing has exploded in size, with many relatively new companies plowing ahead and looking strong.

However, there aren’t too many resources available for those looking to get their works published on whom to go with, and sites like Wikifur confusingly list long-dormant and dissolved companies under active publishers. So I went ahead and compiled a list of currently active fandom publishers looking at submissions, either regularly or periodically. I do not pretend this to be exhaustive, so these listed may not be the only options available.

A word of warning: What these publishers accept may change without notice. Some only publish through submissions to anthologies, while others may open or close their submissions for certain types of media. Many of these publishers are selective in what they publish under their imprint, and are often flooded with submissions and proposals. Always do your research before sending a submission in!

When discussing a contract with a publisher, keep special care to know what rights are being sold. While most publishers only require a period of exclusivity, some may be intending to purchase complete rights to the work. Make certain that you and the publisher are both clear on what is expected from either of you! Read the rest of this entry »